Saturday, October 30, 2010

Survived my first holiday celebration! It was a wild day but so much fun! I had already prepared myself for a lot of craziness, but I was really pleased with my students' behavior! We were so excited about what all was going on, and sometimes it was hard to keep the excitement inside, but we all were able to keep things under control.
Every day in the month of October we read the book Big Pumpkin by Erica Silverman. The teacher I worked with last year introduced me to this book. It's best if you have the audio tape! I was VERY excited to find the tape in things my aunt had given me over the summer! It quickly became my students' favorite too. I loved hearing my students reading along with the book. During centers they loved to read the book. I was very sad it was our last time to read it.
We also sang Witches' Brew several times too! I read a couple of Halloween books, and as I read them I turned the lights off, closed the blinds, and held a flashlight up at my face to make things more spooky! I told my students the spooky story of In a Dark Dark Wood.
In a dark, dark wood there was a dark, dark house;
And in the dark, dark house there was a dark, dark room;
And in the dark, dark room there was a dark, dark cupboard;
And in the dark, dark cupboard there was a dark, dark shelf;
And on the dark, dark shelf there was a dark, dark box;
And in the dark, dark box there was a....ghost!
At the end I make sure to say it a lot louder, and my students screamed like little babies! Then we all laughed and laughed. I went to the other Kindergarten classes and told them too. It was really funny to watch their reactions.
We had started our orange and black celebration off with a pumpkin hunt. I found these cute pumpkins at Target that are like Easter eggs and we went on a pumpkin hunt! We made Monster Mash to eat. I asked students to bring in the ingredients. A few things I included were raisins...aka scabs, marshmallows...aka ghost poop, peanuts...aka knee joints, pretzel sticks...aka skeleton bones, white chocolate chips...aka vampire teeth, peanut butter chips...aka bat droppings, and candy corn...aka monster teeth.

They loved all the food we had! I was pleased to tell the parents that the next day they got to stay home because it was a teacher work day! The sugar rush kids were all theirs!!! They did thank me!!!

Once they finished it was mummy time! I had been so excited about this game. I let 5 different children be wrapped up! They absolutely loved it!!!! They did a really good job working together, and one group even gave their mummy a bow!

We also played Guess the Ghost! I had a white sheet, had all the students close their eyes, and then I chose one student who was the ghost, and all the other students had to guess who it was under the sheet! They got really excited while playing this. It was really cute!

﻿It was a great day! It went really fast. Looking forward to our next celebration!!!

During the party I heard one student say..."Isn't this best Halloween party you have ever had!"